Weightlifting takes center stage in RAISE THE BAR

It seems like sports comics are everywhere these days. Dial Books for Young Readers is betting the next breakout hit comes from the weight room, instead of on the soccer field or in the hockey rink. Raise the Bar, the graphic novel debut from Chilean animator Fernanda Frick H., hit shelves August 25, 2026, retailing at $14.99.

The weightlifting graphic novel for young readers (ages 8-12) follows Sam Sanchez, a girl with no coach and no proper equipment who's nonetheless certain she's going to become Chile's first weightlifting gold medalist. When she gets a shot to train at a high-performance center under her hero (Olympic gold medalist Eva Dos Santos) she takes it, parental permission be damned. What follows is training-arc catnip: new friends, a rival, and a chase for Panamerican Games qualification that tests exactly how much weight Sam can hold, literally and otherwise.

Read the official description below:

Sam Sanchez might not have a coach or proper equipment, but she’s going to become Chile’s first weightlifting gold medalist. She just knows it.

When there’s an opportunity to train at the high-performance center with her weightlifting hero and Olympic gold medalist Eva Dos Santos . . . well, Sam can’t let that opportunity pass. Even if it means going behind her parents’ back.

As she makes friends (and a rival) during training and tries to qualify for the Pan American Games, she’ll find out how far hard work and perseverance can take her and just how much weight she’s able to hold.

Raise the Bar didn't start as a book; instead, it was originally developed as an animated series for Netflix before adapting it into graphic novel form. The author said in an interview with NPR, “I don't ever think that I would have been able to put a little bit of my family story, the dictatorship trauma, in a animated series. So this version - it's really what I wanted to tell.”

Frick H. is best known in animation circles for the short film Here's the Plan, which won the Jury Prize at SIGGRAPH Asia and was long-listed for the 2017 Academy Awards; she previously published the graphic novel Trazos with Editorial Planeta. She currently runs her own studio, FFrick Studio.

Raise the Bar by Fernanda Frick H. is published by Dial Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Penguin Random House. It is currently available for purchase.

Source: Penguin Random House